Gabe Koa

The man crying is George Gillette, tribal chairman of the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa tribes of North Dakota in 1948. He was forced under the threat of death of all his people to sign over the tribes’ homeland on the fertile floodplain of the Missouri River in order to build the Garrison Dam.

The final settlement legislation denied tribes’ right to use the reservoir shoreline for grazing, hunting, fishing or other purposes, including irrigation development and royalty rights on all subsurface minerals within the reservoir area.

After the dam was constructed, the three tribes were scattered, their communities and extended families flung to different shores of the 200-mile-long Lake Sakakawea.